FAANG's Out: Investing Gems In Today's Technology Landscape

When we think about investing in the technology space, we often think of the Apple Inc's AAPL, Facebook Inc's FB and Twitter Inc's TWTR of the world. However, looking at all of these stocks over the past year shows that they’ve either lost money or traded with modest gains.

Obviously, when investing, our goal is to get the biggest bang for our buck, and declines or modest gains simply don’t fit that bill. Nonetheless, there are some gems in technology that have seen strong movement over the past year and are likely to continue on an upbeat trend. Here are hot stocks to keep an eye on in the space.

Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN: 13.86% Price Growth In The Past 12 Months
Amazon is a massive company that’s likely only getting bigger. Over the past year, the stock has climbed 13.86% as early investments in infrastructure and an evolving retail market take center stage.

Amazon is second to none as the world’s leader in online retail, also known as eCommerce. While many bashed the company’s heavy spending early on and focus on high volume sales with small margins, no one is looking down on the company these days.

In fact, according to Tipranks, 34 analysts currently weigh in on the company with all 34 of them recommending that investors buy the stock. Moreover, the average price target on the stock represents a more than 20% potential upside.

So, what’s driving the positive opinions? There are a few factors to consider here. First and foremost, while eCommerce is gaining in popularity, it still only accounted for about 14.3% of retail sales in the United States in 2018. That leaves plenty of room for further growth ahead.

Moreover, Amazon.com is a clear beneficiary of the 15% annual increase in eCommerce sales. In fact, Amazon.com accounted for more than 40% of all eCommerce sales in the United States in 2018. Ultimately, the company’s stronghold on the market doesn’t look to be changing anytime soon, and, as the market grows, the fruits of the company’s labor only grow with it.

It’s also worth mentioning that although analysts are bullish with strong positive opinions, the company consistently outpaces analyst expectations. In fact, the company has generated a positive earnings surprise across the last seven consecutive quarters.

With a growing market that is creating strong opportunities, a leadership position that doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon, and strong analyst opinions matched with consistently positive earnings results, it’s hard to argue against Amazon as a strong investment option.

Zendesk ZEN: 57.23% Price Growth Over The Past 12 Months
Next on the list, we have Zendesk, a customer service platform company with strong growth that’s likely to continue in the right direction. When I say strong growth, I’m not just talking about price appreciation. The company is growing by many other measures.

For example, the company reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2018 in February, showing that sales grew by 41% year over year. The company also generated $0.10 per share, beating analyst expectations of $0.03 per share by a large margin.

In May, the company released yet another strong earnings report, showing that the growth isn’t slowing by any means. In fact, in the first quarter, sales climbed 40% year over year with earnings climbing 100% year over year.

Much of the growth that we’re seeing out of Zendesk comes from its product known as the Zendesk Suite. This is a product suite that allows businesses to connect between colleagues and with customers through various different channels.

The company’s leadership position within its niche is only growing stronger. In fact, there are currently 145,600 paying customers on the platform at the moment, an increase of more than 16% year over year.

While we have seen strong growth as of late, this isn’t likely to come to an end anytime soon. In fact, many argue that it is in full growth mode right now as it continues to tap into an expanding market of cloud-based customer service tools.

With continued innovation and a proven model that is leading to incredible growth, Zendesk is a stock that anyone interested in tech should be paying attention to right now.

Galaxy Next Generation: 56.35% Price Growth Over The Past 12 Months
Galaxy Next Generation is a company that is on the leading edge of the technological evolution that we’re currently seeing in the classroom. With today’s children finding it easier to focus on screens than on a chalkboard, the company is in the right place at the right time to capitalize on the change in times.

Galaxy Next Generation is a distributor of interactive educational technology hardware and software. The company’s products are designed to increase engagement in between student and teacher and provide a fully collaborative instructional environment.

The company’s claim to fame is a robust line of private label interactive touch screen panels. These panels can be matched with several national and international branded peripheral and communications devices to assist teachers in bringing lessons to their students in a more engaging way.

While the stock has already grown more than 50% over the past year, we are likely just seeing the tip of the iceberg as its aggressive expansion strategy continues to pay dividends. In fact, we have seen more than 80% growth in the company’s domestic reseller program over this period. 
Moving forward, the company is working to not only expand in the United States, but around the world, working to take its aggressive growth to a global and highly valuable market. In fact, the smart education market is a rapidly growing one, with estimates putting the global market’s value at around $994 billion by the year 2024.

Interestingly, there is little to nothing when it comes to publicly traded competition. In fact, the only direct, publicly traded competitor that Galaxy Next Generation has is Boxlight. While Boxlight trades with a higher market cap, the company is nowhere near Galaxy Next Generation when it comes to edging up on profits, and its stock is showing the pain, with losses of more than 50% over the past year.

All in all, with little by way of realistic competition, a growing market, and an aggressive expansion strategy, Galaxy Next Generation is poised for further strong growth ahead.

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD: 117.29% Price Growth Over The Past 12 Months
Advanced Micro Devices, a graphics chip maker, is another hot tech stock to dig into. Just looking at the fact that the stock has more than doubled over the past year is impressive. However, there’s a strong argument that this growth is likely to continue.

One of the factors that continues to drive Advanced Micro Devices higher is the fact that innovation at the company is continuing rapidly. In fact, over the Memorial Day weekend, the company announced a new line of products ready to launch.

The announcement took place at the trade show known as Computex, which took place over the holiday weekend. The new chips, known as the Ryzen 3000-series, are central processing units designed specifically to challenge Intel Corporation INTC, which the company has been doing a great job of as of late. Advanced Micro Devices also highlighted new Graphics Processing Units that are likely to shake things up at Nvidia Corporation NVDA, a company with a dominant role in the gaming market.

It is expected that these new products will hit the market as early as July of 2019, making good on the company’s promise to launch new products in the second half of 2019.

As the company continues to innovate, launching new products that shake up high value industries like gaming, personal computers, and cloud computing, investors are expecting to see strong growth in revenue and earnings, setting the stage for price appreciation ahead.

Final Thoughts
While the technology space has been relatively mixed over the past year or so, if you dig deep enough, it’s not uncommon to find gold. When it comes to technology stocks, those mentioned above have not only seen strong growth over the past year, but there are strong arguments that this growth will continue.

About the author:

Ofir Eyal Bar, a successful businessman and Real Estate investor, has more than 15 years of experience in global financial markets as a real estate entrepreneur and investor. Ofir’s experience and go-getter approach has rewarded him with a wide variety of successful real estate investments. Ofir was born in Israel and owns several properties, including residential and commercial real estate properties in Israel as well as London. He is also the owner of multiple mines in Africa.
 

Image sourced from Pixabay